2023-10-22 16:55:24
It is everywhere, or almost. The civil drone is used by farmers to check the condition of crops or provide them with pesticides and fertilizers. It is also the ally of audiovisual professionals, who no longer do without aerial views, as well as security actors, who use them to monitor sites.
Unsurprisingly, it is also of increasing interest to the world of logistics, engaged in a frantic – and perhaps unreasonable – race to shorten delivery times. A race that is coupled with an imperative for decarbonization.
Delivery within one hour by air
In the field of drone delivery, Amazon is among the pioneers. The American giant announced on Wednesday October 18 its desire to strengthen its Prime Air service, which is based on a promise: delivery by air in less than an hour. With the prospect of a deadline soon reduced to 30 minutes, according to Jason Patrao, who leads the engineering of this program.
The company has already deployed it in two cities, in Texas and California. And it intends to implement it in a third American city, before launching, by 2024, in Italy and the United Kingdom.
To succeed in this bet, Amazon will rely on new drones capable of transporting packages weighing up to 2.3 kg, devices, it boasts, capable of operating in a large number of weather situations and conditions. travel a distance twice as long as current models.
It will no longer just be a matter of receiving at home, in a few clicks, the latest fashionable clothing or a toy for your child. The service will also be used to deliver prescription medications to patients, assures the online commerce giant.
Air bridges between hospitals
Delivering health products by air is precisely the raison d’être of a French start-up, Delivrone, based in Rouen, which has around ten employees. His clients ? Groups of hospitals, organized around a support establishment with stocks of medicines, chemotherapy bags, blood reserves which must be transported – until now by road – to secondary establishments, often several miles away. tens of kilometers.
Delivrone is already experimenting in the North with a drone delivery system for biological samples sent to the central hospital, capable of carrying out more in-depth analyses. And the company is also developing around ten other projects which should be completed in 2024 or 2025.
“By using drones flying at around a hundred km/h, we can deliver two to five times faster than by roadpraises Gautier Dhaussy, co-founder of Delivrone. Our air bridges make medical logistics more fluid, and therefore improve patient care. » Equipped with an electric motor, drones also contribute, he emphasizes, “to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions”.
La Poste already operates two lines, in Var and Isère
Still in France, a major player in logistics is increasingly relying on drones. This is La Poste, which obtained authorization from the General Directorate of Civil Aviation in 2016 to open a first regular commercial line in the Var, between Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume and Pourrières. Since then, nearly 390 delivery flights have been carried out there.
In 2019, a second line was created to connect, in Isère, the village of Fontanil-Cornillon valley to Mont-Saint-Martin, a locality perched at an altitude of 760 m on the foothills of the Chartreuse massif (190 flights nowadays).
Using GPS, the drone places the packages in a secure terminal, a sort of large metal container installed in the heart of the village. Customers receive an SMS and an email allowing them to collect theirs securely. Drones, the future of night shows?
A valuable tool for delivering isolated or difficult to access areas
In both cases, La Poste delivers packages ordered on merchant sites or sent by individuals on behalf of Colissimo, DPD France and Chronopost. “These tests validate the approach chosen by the group aimed at using drones to access isolated areas (mountains, islands, rural areas, etc.) or difficult to access areas”, manages La Poste, which is studying the commissioning of new lines. New experiments could emerge soon “around the autonomy of drones and their carrying capacity”.
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